31 March 2015

A lady I've known for
several years came by my office the other day, and saw my holster sticking out from under the tail of my vest as I retrieved papers from the floor.

She got a little pale, and said, "I hope you don't have a gun in that thing. Guns make me nervous." I tried to keep a straight face while answering that it wouldn't make much sense to wear an empty holster.

So I asked if I
make her nervous, and she said no. As gently as possible, I said that the
firearm is an inanimate tool, and that it obeys my commands.

While she
thought that over, I said, "If I'm trustworthy, then you needn't fear
any tool I might use. A hammer or screwdriver, a cordless drill - all could be dangerous, in the wrong hands."

She allowed as how that's true, and then said, "And you were in the military, so I guess it's okay."

I also could have said that with Constitutional carry, quite a large percentage of Alaskans are armed all the time, but I didn't want to provoke a panic attack. :)

Baby steps ... sigh. But at least those steps are in the right direction: I'll take that conversation as one minor victory. At least it made her stop to think about it.

It is as if the GOP took a page out of the Democrats’ book–improved,
then applied it–so that just as the Democrats flooded legislatures with
gun control measures in early 2013, Republicans are now flooding
legislatures with bills broadening the exercise of Second Amendment
rights and protecting the use of firearms for self-defense.

The move was evident on February 18 when Breitbart News reported a New York Times
admission that Republican legislators from state-to-state were gaining
“traction” by pushing Campus Carry as a way for women to fight rape and
sexual assault. Since that time, Campus Carry has advanced in Arkansas,
Florida, Texas, and Nevada, and is being considered in approximately 10
other states.

This was news because it marked a turning point wherein Republicans
actually took away one of the Democrat’s go-to causes for gun
control–domestic abuse–and turned it into a rallying cry for arming
women.

And while Campus Carry was being pushed, a broad-based push for
Constitutional Carry emerged wherein Republicans in the legislatures of
Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, West Virginia, and other
states began pushing to abolish the need for a concealed carry permit.
The legislatures in each of these states did so by arguing that having a
permit requirement to carry a gun is tantamount to having a permit
requirement to exercise Second Amendment rights, and therefore wrong.

In addition to continuing to advance Campus Carry and Constitutional
Carry, Texas began pushing to become the 45th state in the union to have
some type of Open Carry law on the books.

Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America rallied against Texas’
Open Carry legislation, and just when they appeared to have stifled it,
Governor Greg Abbott (R) emerged to say Open Carry would become the law of the land in Texas as soon as legislation to carry in that fashion hits his desk.
That legislation is expected to land on his desk within weeks.

While facing these myriad defeats in state legislatures around the
country, Moms Demand Action has simultaneously found it tougher and
tougher to get businesses and corporations to go along with requests to
disarm law-abiding citizens in their stores. Most recently, Breitbart News reported
that Kroger CFO Michael Schlotman said the food retail chain rejects
Moms Demand Action’s push to forbid open-carry of firearms in Kroger
stores. And this announcement comes after grocer chains Fred Meyer and
Harris Teeter both told Moms Demand Action the same thing.

But Moms Demand Action isn’t alone in losing big at this time. MSNBC
recently reported that Everytown for Gun Safety–another pro-active,
Bloomberg-funded gun control group that opposes Campus Carry–has now
been relegated to the role of counting NRA victories across the country.

We
were in the Mediterranean, sailing out of Elefsis, Greece. The skies
had been black for days. The darkness outside seemed to seep into the
interior of the ship, along with the chill of the damp sea air that
pervaded everything. Seas didn't just "toss", they writhed and groaned
like living things in untold misery, and shot up waves that looked like
overhanging cliffs.

stormy weather at sea

The winds howled and moaned, and
whisked tons of seawater into the atmosphere. The wash of ocean across
the decks had become a familiar, if unwelcome, sight. The announcement
was repeated hourly over the 1MC (P.A. system), "Weather decks are
closed (off limits) to all hands. Attention on deck: the weather decks
are closed to all hands."

Those who were susceptible to
seasickness had been in their bunks for several days, as well. The rest
of us tried to work, but it was nearly impossible to get much done when
the deck beneath our feet was rolling and pitching fore and aft, side
to side, with a continuous series of 15- to 22-degree rolls in all
directions.

The gasket on the porthole in my office on
the main level of the ship had dried out a bit, and wasn't completely
watertight. This would prove to be a problem, later on.

"Attention on deck: the weather decks are closed to all hands."

The
only escape was in sleep. We lashed ourselves to our racks (bunks)
with tie-down straps, and slept like babies. Well, most of us did. The
rocking, rolling, rising and falling did wonders for those who had
learned to embrace it. The forward rolls in this
storm was occasionally so great that the screws would lift clear of the
sea, and the change in pitch was distracting until we got used to that,
too.

A ship in a storm at sea, but not MY ship.

Working hours at sea are different
than in port. When tied up to a dock, the daytime shift was 0800 to
1700, with an hour for lunch. At sea, we worked 0800 to 1800, with two
and a half hours for lunch. Many would go back to their racks and sleep
during this time. It's not like we had anyplace else to go.

"Attention on deck: the weather decks are closed to all hands."

We
had taken on a new batch of sailors just before leaving port. That's
not unusual; sailors come and go all the time, as their tours at one
duty station expire, and they transfer to another. This time, though,
we'd taken in quite a few newbies, and many had been on board for only a
day or two before we got underway.

The storms started
almost immediately, and it seemed that they'd never end. Those of us
who had our "sea legs" watched in amazement as our feet drifted from one
side of the midships passageway to the other, at times literally
walking up onto the baseboards. This storm was something special; we all
knew it. Or at least most of us did.

"Attention on deck: the weather decks are closed to all hands."

The
storms grew worse. Moving around the ship became more hazardous, and
we used both hands, as well as our feet, to balance ourselves when we
had to move. Using the head was an issue, and sailors had to brace
themselves with both hands there, too. (This may sound funny, but try
taking a shower when the stall is pitching from 22 degrees to the left,
to 25 degrees to the right, and moving up and down at the same time.
When we got ourselves braced as well as we could, we had to suffer the
water sweeping from side to side as the water, too, obeyed gravity.)

Most
of the parts of the ship were readily accessible, during this time, but
there were two exceptions. The front and rear gun mounts had exterior
hatches, and access was normally just a few steps from a rear door
opening on an athwart-ships passageway, to the hatch on the side of the
mount.

"Attention on deck: the weather decks are closed to all hands."

Not
so, during this storm. The weather was too rough, and tons of seawater
were constantly washing across the deck, driven by gale-force winds.
The gunners had to go through berthing* compartments to access
their work areas. They went down a ladder, through the compartment in
question, and then up another ladder into the base of the mount.

"Attention on deck: the weather decks are closed to all hands."

One
of the newly-arrived Gunner's Mates was Joseph M (name changed). He either didn't
understand what the announcements meant, or paid no attention. But more about him, later.

(As an aside, the Navy sends movies around to the fleet -- or at least,
they used to, in the pre-digital, pre-computer age -- and we were shown
The Poseidon Adventure, during the storm. Insert your own jokes here; you can't make this stuff up.)

On the worst day of the storm (the day after seeing Poseidon, naturally),
we took a 36-degree roll to starboard. The ship heeled over, like it
had done every minute or so for days, but then it didn't stop. The list
increased. At my desk, I faced the port side. My chair started to
scoot away from the desk; I grabbed the handles on the front of the desk
- placed there for that purpose - and tried to pull myself forward.

The
chair slipped away from me and tumbled across the compartment, crashing into the desks on the outboard side. I put my feet down on the deck and had
trouble leaning forward, as the list continued to increase. Eventually I
was hanging full-length from the handles, with my knees and toes dragging on the
deck behind - not beneath - me.

Book and manuals, normally held in overhead
shelves with lengths of rope, began to rain down on my head and back.
Drawers slid open, and papers on the desktop slid across and showered
the compartment.

At this point, the office went dark. I
tried to see over my shoulder, but couldn't because of the angle. I
wound up looking under my arm, to see that the porthole was under water,
and water was pouring in around the defective gasket. This was
something new ...

I remember thinking, "We're going to have to clean
that up."

Slowly, with shuddering, creaking and a
groaning vibration felt deep in our bones, the ship began to right
itself. It took a long time - too long - before the feeble daylight
began to show through the porthole, and the water stopped running down
the bulkhead.

It was a 36-degree roll; the ship's
capsize point was 37 degrees. A great many of us got a little weak in
the knees when we realized how close we came to a literal watery grave.

Almost
immediately after righting, the call of "Man overboard!" was sounded.
Our aft lookout had seen what looked like a figure in Navy uniform wash
across the fantail, and then go through the life rail back into the sea.

Joe
hadn't taken the warnings to heart. He tried to go out the forward hatch (front door, at the end of the passageway nearest the front of the ship),
to get to the forward gun mount. One of the biggest waves of the storm had
hit just as he opened the door, allowing quite a bit of water to enter
the interior passageway. The next man to see it pulled the door shut,
and was trying to figure out how it got open in the first place.

To
make what is now a long story a little bit shorter, Joe washed across
the main deck, went under the ship and came back up on the opposite
side, at the fantail (the flat part of the deck, at the rear of the ship). That's what the aft lookout had seen. Joe was
then sucked back under the ship, where he was pulled through the screws.

We
conducted the standard enumeration of the crew, and his absence was
reported to my office in very short time. The skipper, of course, had
brought the engines to full stop when the alarm was sounded, and we
performed an "Anderson" turn, where one screw goes forward while the
other goes in reverse, neatly pivoting the ship in place. (This
maneuver is not possible with single-screw ships.)

The
lookouts finally saw Joe bobbing in the water, far off to starboard, and
a diver went in to get him, trailing safety ropes. The ship, in the
meantime, was now at rest, bobbing like a cork in the rough seas. Many
of those who hadn't gotten sick before, became so now.

Joe was in very
bad shape from being chewed up by the screws; "Doc" Brown, the
corpsman, told me that Joe died three times on the table, while Doc
tried to stabilize him and bandage the worst of his wounds.

We called a chopper from the carrier for an evac, and never saw Joe again.

* * * * *

Joe
was from Anchorage, where I live now. For whatever reason, I was
thinking about him recently. None of us then knew him very well; he'd
been on the ship for less than a week when these events happened.

I
don't know if he survived. If he did, I don't know where he is today.
But as far as I know, no one has told his story before, and I thought
it was time someone did.

GMG3 Joseph M., you are not
forgotten. This old sailor salutes you; you made a mistake, and paid dearly for it.

But you were still a volunteer in our country's
Armed Forces at a time when service was not popular, and you are
remembered.

We Stand with Israel

Followers

Found on the Blue Box

About Me

I believe in the constitution, strength in national defense, limited government, individual freedom, and personal responsibility as the concrete foundation for American government. They reinforce the resolve that the United States is the greatest country in the world and we can all be eternally grateful to our founding fathers for the beautiful legacy they left us today. Above all, we must remember that all of man’s freedoms come ultimately from God.

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